ASRA Network

Some news from ASRA… 🐛🦋 ASRA has decided to transition the ownership and management of our assets, activities, and operations to others who share our purpose and can build on what we have achieved over the past two years. This decision reflects both the realities of today’s funding landscape—where unrestricted support for small, niche nonprofits is increasingly scarce—and a deliberate choice with respect to responding to a changed and changing world. Rather than slowly constraining the work or reshaping ourselves to chase funding, we are choosing to steward ASRA’s mission forward with intention, care, and openness to possibilities as they emerge. We don’t yet know exactly what the outcomes of this transition will look like, and that uncertainty is part of the opportunity. After all, in nature, endings can disguise beginnings: a caterpillar dissolves into a liminal chrysalis—seemingly undone—so a butterfly can take wing. Our Executive Director, Ruth Richardson, shares more via the link in our bio.

Here’s a challenge for World Environment Day: Can we put animals, plants, fungi – even air, water, rocks and wind – at the center of solving systemic risk? 🐆🌿 Our current ways of assessing and responding to the polycrisis center human concerns and ways of knowing. When the polycrisis affects all life – not just human life – on Earth, we must find ways to remove our human blinkers. In this carousel, we share six emerging methods that take a nature-centric approach – each offering promise for navigating the polycrisis. We’ll be sharing more about our journey into nature-centric approaches to systemic risk as we begin testing these methods later this year. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you – what promising approaches to recentering the nonhuman world have you seen? 🔵 Methods drawn from /1 Michael Jones and others, Nathan Angelakis, /2 Nickie Charles and others /3 We acknowledge indigenous peoples maintaining shamanic knowledge /4 Siddique Ibrahim /5 Phoebe Tickell, /6 Julian Rutten, Alexander Holland, Stanislav Roudavski and others. #WorldEnvironmentDay #EnvironmentDay #SystemicRisks #polycrisis #morethanhumanfutures

Two Nordic nations have made preparing for future risks part of people’s everyday life. It’s an act of honest hope and clear-eyed realism. Flipping the status quo of top-down emergency management, Sweden and Finland have adopted a participatory and proactive approach to preparing their populations for a range of hazards. Everyone has a role in building societal resilience and preparedness, from citizens and organizations to government. 🇸🇪 Sweden’s National Preparedness Week encourages household self-sufficiency for at least one week. 🇫🇮 Finland published a guide to help individuals prepare for disruptions, with concrete steps for surviving wartime and other crises. 🇫🇮 And arranged 45,000 civil defence shelters that double as parking garages and sports venues in peacetime. Calm and transparent communication about what the future could hold, coupled with practical steps that everyone can take to prepare. It’s an approach steeped with honest hope. This infographic and case study form part of a series called 10 concepts for understanding and responding to systemic risk. Read more about Sweden and Finland’s strategies to prepare their citizens for future crises via the link in our bio.

In January, ASRA announced it had entered a managed sunset process, seeing us work to transition our assets to others to keep the mission going. We’re openly sharing what that looks and feels like. The series ‘Inside the Chrysalis’ reflects on the dilemmas, emotions, experiments, and decisions that arise during our intentional transition. From the power of networks to the guiding role of exit commitments, Ruth Richardson, our Executive Director, reflects on this phase in the second blog of the series. Read via the link in our bio.

Here’s a challenge for Earth Day: Can you imagine what risk feels like for a jaguar, a fungi, a swallow, or a beetle? 🪲🍄🐦‍⬛ Everywhere we look, systemic risks are multiplying. Climate breakdown deepens geopolitical instability, and pandemics ripple into economic collapse. Yet the frameworks we use to assess and respond to risk remain strikingly narrow. We begin and end with one species: humans. This is a serious practical blind spot. In a new blog, @being_philt , our Director of Nature-Centric Approaches, challenges human-centredness in understanding global risk. Drawing on a growing body of frontier-thinking and ASRA’s own River Tone project, Phil explores methods to extend perception beyond human limits and trace systemic risk through nonhuman eyes. Read "Let the mushrooms run the risk department! Challenging human-centredness in understanding global risk", through the link in our bio. #EarthDay #EarthDay2026 #nonhuman #morethanhuman #systemicrisk

New ASRA paper in One Earth: “The urgency of building systemic risk capacity in a polycrisis world." A new paper, led by Ajay Gambhir, Sarah Hendel-Blackford, and co-authored with many of our ASRA Network members, shows that the world is ill-equipped to deal with rapidly unfolding, interconnected crises that stem from systemic risk. Governance, research, businesses, and public, private, and philanthropic funding streams remain too siloed. The authors argue for a major reconfiguration across sectors and geographies to build systemic risk capacity to address the unique and unprecedented polycrisis facing our world. Read the paper in @oneearth_journal – link in bio. With thanks to: Michael Albert, Hanna Asipovich, Lorenzo Benini, Sylvanus Doe, Haripriya Gundimeda, Christopher Hobson, David Korowicz, Michael Lawrence, Robert Lempert, Igor Linkov, Ayan Mahamoud, Rosemary Nantambi, Tom Oliver, Ivana Pavkova, @ruthrichardson , Ashwin Seshadri, Maxime Stauffer, Pablo Suarez, Lalitha Sundaram, and @kashmurph

Crises often don’t happen in isolation. One event can trigger another in a domino effect that causes crises to interact, cascade, and compound. The Zimbabwe Friendship Bench shows what it looks like to respond to cascading crises in practice. In Zimbabwe, intersecting crises of poverty, genocide, and an HIV epidemic deepened national trauma and mental health issues. A severe lack of psychiatrists and psychologists in the country left many individuals struggling with depression and anxiety. The Zimbabwe Friendship Bench is a grassroots mental health initiative that reimagines care delivery by training elders, “grandmothers”, to provide culturally resonant, evidence-based therapy on benches in safe, public spaces. The cascade effect cuts both ways: treating mental health improves HIV viral suppression, boosts income, and strengthens communities. With over 3,000 trained health workers across 70 communities, it has served 700,000+ people, reducing depression and suicidal ideation by 78%. 🔟 This infographic and case study form part of a new series called 10 concepts for understanding and acting on systemic risk. 👉 Read more about The Zimbabwe Friendship Bench in the link in our bio. Thanks to @chibandadixon , Founder of @friendshipbench_global . #FriendshipBench

What can history tell us about the patterns and behaviours that drive inequality, and those that dismantle it? In The Rethink, SoDy’s Daniel Hoyer and Rachel Ainsworth (ASRA Network members) trace how patterns of inequality recur across history, and appear in similar forms today. From the ancient empires in Rome and Han China to the USA’s New Deal era, SoDy reveals the behaviours of former societies that deepened inequality and led to crises, then draws lessons from societies that pursued reforms to reverse it. Read The Rethink via the link in our bio.

Could cultivating a sense of connection to nature help tackle systemic risks to our planet? 🌿🦋🌎 In an interview for The Rethink series, Professor Tom Oliver, University of Reading, and ASRA network member, draws on scientific evidence to make this case. He argues that restoring a sense of connection to nature could ‘cascade up’ to transform institutions. In turn, this could help shift legal, education, and economic systems to protect nature rather than drive ecocide. Read the full interview with Tom via the link in our bio.

Every system has critical points of intervention where targeted actions become far more effective. Wales acted on this through its Well-being of Future Generations Act. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Over 10 years ago, Wales committed to governing and responding to systemic risks and crises in a way that would protect the interests of future generations. To achieve this, it targeted a critical point of intervention: public bodies’ decision-making, using the law to reshape how decisions are made. The 2015 Well-being of Future Generations Act legally mandates that every public body must consider the long-term before making decisions, leading to ‘the greatest cultural change program the Welsh public sector has ever gone through’. The result? All public institutions must balance current needs with the rights of future generations. It’s changed how Wales governs: * voting at 16, * a universal basic income pilot for care-leavers, * a net-zero challenge group. Head to the link in our bio to learn more. This infographic and case study form part of a new series called 10 concepts for understanding and acting on systemic risk.

Rivers are in crisis worldwide. To understand what’s wrong, we measure pollution, assess flood risk, and model water scarcity – almost always from a human point of view. What might we be missing? #WorldWaterDay The ‘Risks Beyond Human Eyes’ project is exploring this question for the River Tone in the UK. Over six months, community members from along the river are collaborating with their nonhuman-kin to centre their worlds as the basis for understanding and responding to risk. It is a different kind of risk assessment. One that treats more-than-human life not as a variable in our models, but as a collaborator. What we discover will become a shared resource: a new way to understand systemic risk from inside the river. We plan to share the outcomes of this approach so that other communities can adapt it for their own rivers, species, and landscapes. To learn more about ‘Risks Beyond Human Eyes’, visit the link in our bio. Thanks to our project partners @uwebristol @somersetwt @longrunmeadow and @ecological.citizens #WorldWaterDay #RisksBeyondHumanEyes #EcologicalCitizenship #MoreThanHuman #SystemicRisk #RiverTone @being_philt

A lot of decision-makers feel overwhelmed by the complexity and uncertainty of today’s world. What could help break through this paralysis and lead to positive, impactful action? Lorenzo Benini from the European Environment Agency shares his insights on governance mechanisms and strategies that work well in the context of today’s interconnected global challenges. Read an extract of his interview in our carousel, and the full article in The Rethink – Link in our bio. #deepuncertainty #complexity #globalrisks #systemicrisk #systemicrisks #polycrisis #governance #governancestrategy #strategy